The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Dark Terrors 05]

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  The needle was so thin it became invisible as it entered her flesh. If all edges were so very sharp perhaps she wouldn’t have minded. She wondered with the pleasant vagueness of dream if sunlight had such a supernormally sharp edge, if in fact it stabbed you to release your darker colours.

  She fantasized asking one of her friends in the office to drive her home, but then realized she didn’t have any friends.

  * * * *

  At home she lay back into her pillows and stared out the window which pressed against the side of her bed. Her ear was covered by a small oval bandage like a cap. These clear glass panes were her only safe windows to the world. And yet if they were to break she’d surely slash her throat on their edges.

  Altogether the room felt less safe than at any time she could remember. Shadows in the room seemed somehow keener than they should have been, even when cast by soft, rounded objects such as pillows and bed corners. She dozed off and on, and every time she opened her eyes the room felt sharper-edged. The surfaces of the pillows were dusty, grittier with each new awakening. She turned her head: angular edges of ceiling littered their primary-coloured cases. She glanced up: cracks in the ceiling, edges peeling, falling.

  A hard, rhythmic scraping was working its way through the bed and into successive layers of her skin. She glanced down at her hands: her fingers frustrated, attempting to rip the sheets with her chewed-away nails.

  The sudden screech of the doorbell cut through the thick bedroom air. She staggered into her robe and down the stairs. Her ear felt wet, as if it had started bleeding again, but when she raised her hand to the stiff bandage her fingers came away dry.

  She became acutely aware of small details as she passed through her apartment: the triangular pattern on the dishes, the swirling topography left by the vacuum in the rug, the coloured bits in a teddy bear’s glass eye. After a long day away she focused on such things with every return trip to her apartment, but this afternoon they seemed to be demanding increased attention.

  On the other side of the door was a man in a cap, a bundle in his arms. The peephole brought her a reassuring slice of him: bland, sunshiny, smiling face, a florist’s symbol on the cap, a bundle of flowers in his hand. She opened the door a minimal amount. ‘Miss Jane Akers?’ She nodded, and took the flowers.

  It was after she closed the door firmly behind her that she felt the pricking around the stems, and discovered that sharp wire bound the flower arrangement together, short sections of it twisted together as on a barbed wire fence. Her fingers grew sticky where they’d been punctured; juice from the stems made them sting. There was no card.

  She thought she heard a throaty whispering in the apartment which disappeared every time she tried to focus on it. But for several weeks there had been a continuous thread of barely detectable whispering, murmured beneath taped music, within the background static of phone conversations, between the lines of television commercials, so to hear it today, after so much trauma, should not have been surprising.

  She didn’t want the flowers - she despised them. But she couldn’t just throw them in the trash. You weren’t supposed to throw flowers away; you were supposed to put them in water. So she did. She wondered if the barbed wire would rust. Feeling she could not stay here another minute she got on her coat and opened the door, intent on walking out of her anxiety.

  * * * *

  Maxwell watched the florist’s van pull away from the front of her apartment building. It had been easy enough to find a young man eager to make the extra money, without asking embarrassing questions. Maxwell had stood by the outside door and witnessed the entire transaction, and had been touched by the way she’d pulled the flowers into her arms so desperately, as if starved for affection. It made him love her even more.

  She was shy, yet eager for love — he could sense this about her. She was his discovery. He was sure he could make contact with a woman like this - he was convinced she was reachable, unlike so many other women who frightened him. He could make contact - if not with his heart, then with his knife.

  Now she was leaving the building, walking briskly down the street, her chin pushed forward as if in defiance. He smiled and checked the Polaroid camera on the seat beside him, the extra film cartridges in the box beside it. He started the car.

  * * * *

  Jane had no particular destination in mind, but she would know where she was going when she got there. She stared at the far away trees, the grey outlines of buildings reaching into the dark city mists. On the face of a distant tower giant clock hands sliced through the heavy air, releasing its toll like a damp explosion.

  She passed a black metal fence, its vertical bars spinning by her like film frames. The sharp points along the top of the wrought iron leaned in her direction, aiming at her soft flesh.

  People lounged along the edges of the sidewalk and on the grassy verge of the park spreading out in front of her. Were they waiting for her? Their noses showed the sharp profile of cartilage. Their jaws were blades, their chins the points. They stared at her with their thin, sharp smiles. She wanted to say something that would make them like her, but she didn’t know the right words.

  A lizard crawled out of the grass directly in front of her, as if to divert her attention. She thought of stepping on its back, shuddered, and moved away from it.

  At the north gate of the park a man had set up a table and was selling brushes and combs. A succession of combs lined a tray covered with black velvet. He grinned at her as he brushed his fingers across their fine teeth. ‘A lovely comb for the lovely lady?’

  He scared her, but it would be rude to hurry past. ‘They’re so pretty,’ she said, looking down at the pitiful selection. ‘How much is that one?’ she asked, pointing to the cleanest-looking one.

  ‘For you, a buck.’

  She gave him a dollar at the end of trembling fingers. He touched the dollar, but then his whole hand moved up to clutch her arm. ‘Such a pretty girl.’ She smiled nervously, on the verge of tears. She wanted to scream, but what if he was really nice? He bent down and kissed her fingers with lips that felt slick and oily. ‘Have a nice day,’ he said, letting go of her arm and handing her the comb. She made herself smile again, then walked away, rubbing the back of her hand on her coat, trying to wipe away the feel of his lips.

  She approached a row of storefronts. Soft explosions of brilliant light occurred behind her, but when she turned around there was nothing there. She looked up at the sky: dark clouds were piling one atop the other, their edges rubbed shiny where lightning had gathered.

  She looked into the window of a hardware store: an axe, shovel, shears. Then several clothing boutiques: black gloves, black lace. Sexless beings dressed completely in black: hats, gloves, black leather coats.

  She imagined she could hear the sounds of zippers snagging flesh from deep inside these shops, the customers weeping softly.

  She was vaguely aware of someone taking photos of her, but when she turned around no one was there.

  She had to step over an old man in dark glasses, lying with his German shepherd, both of them sprawled across the middle of the sidewalk. The old man’s cane came up, pointing at her like an arrow. The dog turned and bared its teeth, then lunged for the pasty flesh of the man’s wrinkled hand. The man yelled. Blood sprayed in a mist across the sidewalk.

  She looked past the wounded man at another man standing in a doorway. His damp lips. His glistening eyes watching her. His hands clutching, as if they held the stolen tableknife. But she knew this wasn’t the same man.

  Thunder crashed behind her. For a second the city skyline appeared to be on fire, a giant camera scorching it as picture after picture was taken. Rain began, then suddenly became a downpour.

  Even through the heavy rain she could see them all staring at her. Jane found sanctuary beneath a large store awning. On the other side of the glass an elderly woman was cutting shapes out of black paper, demonstrating silhouette portraiture. Jane thought she recognized the profile the o
ld woman was working on as her own.

  The woman looked up, gasping as she peered into Jane’s face. The scissors slipped and cut through the face of the silhouette.

  Jane ran back out into the rain. Music crashed inside her head. The storm sounded like the same music. She gazed past the grey buildings, searching, intent on returning to her apartment. The rain slackened some. She entered the park. Blades of leaves, blades of grass. Children had gathered by the north gate and were playing with a lizard. There was no sign of the man selling combs. Another bright, soft explosion, but Jane didn’t bother to look up this time. She gazed more closely at the children. Their lizard wriggled madly, nailed through its neck to a board. She suddenly burned hot with shame.

  The centrepiece of the park was an arrangement of giant metal sculptures with razor-thin planes, broad fields of metal. At first glance the sculptures appeared curvilinear, but closer examination revealed hidden points, sharp edges residing within the folds of illusory soft steel and brass.

  She ran past the sculptures as another bright flash almost blinded her, and suddenly a pigeon was flapping at her side, caught on the huge button of her coat sleeve. Its claws came out and dug a ridge into the flesh covering the back of her hand.

  She finally shook the bird loose, crying loudly as it pecked her. No one came to her aid. The world was full of too many sharp edges. It was pointless to get too deeply involved. You risked your own death. She ran the few remaining blocks, the rain beating the blood away as it struggled to escape her cuts.

  She slammed the apartment door behind her. Someone had dropped a shiny, brightly-coloured magazine through her mail slot. She picked it up. Inside, nude photos of women had been scored horizontally repeatedly with a razorblade, turning their flesh into Venetian blinds.

  * * * *

  Maxwell used up all his film, and he would have loved to have had several more packs. The passion in her face as she ran away from the man with the cane, the trapped bird - he would have given anything to have had such passion directed at him. He loved her more with each stolen glimpse of intense emotion. He hoped the magazine he had left for her demonstrated just how much she made him feel, how badly he wanted to reach her, make contact, and banish his loneliness for ever.

  * * * *

  When Jane threw the magazine to the floor a note fell from its pages. She ripped the envelope open frantically, jerking the folded letter out with shaking fingers. His handwriting consisted of thin, jagged uprights, virtually unreadable. Love . . . sharp . . . you . . . reach: these were the only words she could make out.

  A crashing in the alley. Garbage can lids banged out a crazed musical. She crept to the back door that led to the fire escape and pulled it open. The alley was silent, empty.

  She closed the door and turned back into the hallway which ran the length of her apartment. She stepped on something soft and pliant. She reached down and picked up the worn leather glove. A man’s glove: who was responsible for it? It was stained here and there a dark colour, a shade of red like ancient rust.

  Bright neon from the hotel sign outside the window at the end of the hall washed the walls a more brilliant red. At the end of the hall the tall curtains on either side of the window swept the floor, gliding in and out as if the window were a mouth, breathing. She knew there were sharp blades behind the billowing curtains, an erect penis behind the soft gabardine swaddling the crotch of the man who might be hiding-there.

  She could not stay here any longer. In her make-up mirror she paid particular attention to the jagged patterns in her eyes, but no cosmetic could smooth these. It was all a part of being in the world, she supposed, but now she did not know if she wanted to be a part of the world or not. She glanced at her clock: impossibly, it said she had been back in her apartment for hours.

  She finally gave up on returning a semblance of normalcy to her face, put on her coat again, and left her apartment to go see a movie. At least she could be assured that in the movie theatre, nothing is real.

  * * * *

  Maxwell wondered if Jane had read his note yet, if she had glanced through his magazine, if she had discovered his intentionally dropped glove. Simple things, but they had the power to agitate the imagination of those vulnerable enough to suggestion. The innocent knew that the world was a dangerous place, but they were incapable of fully appreciating the implications.

  In the two hours since he had left Jane’s apartment he had been quite busy. The close proximity of her things had aroused him so he immediately went out looking for a substitute for her.

  The woman hadn’t wanted to return home with him, but it never ceased to amaze him how easily obstacles could be got rid of by means of a simple act of murder.

  He enjoyed dancing. It was the only time he could hold a live woman with safety. But death made this one an even better dancing partner than he was used to. He had to tie her body to his waist and legs, but once this had been accomplished she followed him perfectly, now and then rolling her head on to his shoulder in affection. A pity he was already taken.

  He hadn’t caught her name before, but he preferred making up his own names anyway. ‘Janice,’ for this one, as she was to be Jane’s substitute for the moment. With the wound in her face Janice was completely possessable: a marred masterpiece, a ‘second’ available for a reduced price, reduced effort. But she remained a great work of art for all that.

  As the music rose to a crescendo he recalled the moments of Janice’s creation: how he had heard her heart in his head, beating, struggling to escape the point of his knife (but not Jane’s knife - he would never betray Jane in that fashion), how again and again he had thrust the point into the centre of her beating, until the sound had faded from his head.

  She had struggled, but all too briefly. She had kicked a bit; as if in a dream he had felt her high heels puncturing his flesh, marking him in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

  Now the dance was over. The music ran down. Maxwell grasped the knife handle still protruding from Janice’s chest. He pulled down on the knife. Her flesh split like rotted silk. He gasped with pleasure as the blade sliced through blouse, slip, skin.

  He gasped again and again, louder than the music screaming in his head.

  * * * *

  As she walked to the movie the passers-by whispered amongst themselves, too loudly for comfort, in fact far more loudly than was possible.

  She might have gone to the police, but what could she tell them? She’d received a garbled note, a damaged magazine, and someone had lost a glove, someone had stolen a knife from a local restaurant. Her co-workers would be questioned, and they would talk about how nervous ‘Poor Jane’ had always been, how high-strung, how no one in the office really liked her. She would be embarrassed in front of the police; they would be disappointed in her.

  She put on her glasses before entering the movie, intending to wear them for the rest of the night. She’d always felt protected behind the thick lenses. Even when she witnessed something terrible - a workman’s hand slashed open on a dagger of glass, a young boy stabbed just above the groin in a schoolyard fight - she felt shielded by that thickness from the full weight of these incidents. They could not touch her on the other side of the glass. The images would not adhere to the filmy surface of her eyes.

  But there was also this accompanying sense of danger: glass that so shielded her might break if the images came too close.

  The theatre darkened; the previews came up with amplified colour and volume. What little light remained reflected off all the sharp edges hidden in the theatre. A few minutes into the movie she realized she had seen it before, but she knew she wouldn’t be watching the screen anyway. Instead she gazed at the backs of people’s heads, the placement of their arms on companions’ shoulders, their small open displays of affection, and observed how they reacted to the murders taking place on the screen. Maxwell had always enjoyed the company of mannequins. So intent on looking a certain way for their male customers, they did not speak back. He envied
their makers.

  He bundled Janice, the mannequin he had created, into a bag and brought her back to Jane’s apartment during the movie - he had passed Jane on the way over, and followed her until he was sure of her destination. If he worked quickly, he knew he could be outside the movie theatre when the film ended.

  The lock on the apartment door had jimmied easily. Poor, naive Jane. Her lack of informed caution filled him with a renewed tenderness towards her. On the bed, blood dripped down the mannequin’s arm, paused in the openness of the relaxed palm, then leapt from the forefinger to the carpet below.

  He took the Polaroids he had made of Jane and spread them carefully across her dining-room table. He laid one against the other, matching patterns, shadows, stances, expressions. He permitted one image of her to kiss another image of her. His fingers lingered over her glossy surfaces. He meditated on the silkiness of her image. He took a pair of scissors from the drawer and laid one blade across a photograph, bisecting her face. He moved the blades together until her head disappeared. He raised one of the photographs, poised the twin points of the scissors over the image of her breasts, and pierced them simultaneously with one quick jab. He then began cutting through each of the photographs, disassembling each image of her until he had a large pile of shiny pieces. A bottle of bright red nail polish, retrieved from her dressing table, sat poised on the edge of her fragmented poses. He took this and began painting the pile of clippings with red swirls, arrows and bright red hearts.